


we can make it so divine

by bytheinco_nstantmoon



Series: ribs [1]
Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: Bobby | Trevor Wilson Defense Squad, Fluff and Angst, Getting Together, I don't know why this always happens, Kissing, Light Angst, Love Confessions, Multi, Polyamory, Pre-Canon, Recreational Drug Use, Self-Esteem Issues, So much kissing, Sunset Curve (Julie and The Phantoms), THIS IS SO FUCKING SAPPY, Tenderness, all my characters are catholic but it's not intentional, and now we have this, bobby be like has problems, but isn't that just the plot of everything i write, i just wanted to return to my roots, i return to my branding once more, i'm sorry for the bible references, ie bobby hurt/comfort, im sorry to tell you this but, jon makes way too many metaphors pt 2374735, like so tender, literally half the wordcount is the kissing, say it with me... weed, so. you're fuckin welcome ig, there r like five
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:21:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27921457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bytheinco_nstantmoon/pseuds/bytheinco_nstantmoon
Summary: It wasn’t that they didn’t like him, or that he didn’t love them- of course he did. He loved them like he’d never loved anyone in his life. He loved them like the trees loved soil, like the bees loved the flowers. He loved them like his lungs loved the air he breathed. But his lungs tended to stutter, tended to fail- it was the smokes, or it was the city air, and he couldn’t always breathe.All this to say they couldn’t always love him. And that was okay. Bobby couldn’t always love himself either.-or; Reggie has a question, and Bobby goes to confession for them.
Relationships: Alex/Bobby | Trevor Wilson/Luke Patterson/Reggie
Series: ribs [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2050923
Comments: 24
Kudos: 171





	we can make it so divine

**Author's Note:**

> this was 2k words of platonic bonding and then i was like "ok i can't pass this off as platonic anymore" so. then it turned into 4k of idiot boys in love and you know what? good for them. also good for me

Bobby settled against the wall, watching his boys with half-lidded eyes as they all piled together on the bed. Alex’s whole room was going to stink of weed, but who fucking cared, honestly, when his parents were already mad at him for existing? Bobby pulled his knees up to his chest with a lazy smile. Alex and Reggie were tangled up, their arms and legs all hooked together and Reggie’s nose buried into Alex’s neck. Luke was laying on his side half propped up next to them, his stomach pressed into Reggie’s back and one leg thrown over their hips. He and Alex were having a quiet conversation over Reggie’s head. Bobby couldn’t really hear them from his spot on the wall, but that was alright. He was content just watching. He’d never really been part of the quiet conversations, anyway.

It wasn’t that they didn’t like him, or that he didn’t love them- of course he did. He loved them like he’d never loved anyone in his life. He loved them like the trees loved soil, like the bees loved the flowers. He loved them like his lungs loved the air he breathed. But his lungs tended to stutter, tended to fail- it was the smokes, or it was the city air, and he couldn’t always breathe.

All this to say they couldn’t always love him. And that was okay. Bobby couldn’t always love himself either. But their love for each other- that love was unconditional. That love was quiet conversations and tangled knees. That love was the waves and the sand. It never could pull completely away.

Reggie shifted slightly, pressing himself further back into Luke, and raised his face from Alex’s neck with a slow smile. Alex glanced down at him. Whispered something. Reggie pulled a face at him in reply. Luke laughed under his breath, running a hand through Reggie’s hair, looking at him all warm and soft and sweet, like brown sugar. Looking at him like he was all the world. Reggie leant into the touch with a hum. His eyes flickered from Alex’s over to Bobby, slumped against the wall. A touch of a frown crossed his face.

Bobby looked away, down at his knees. That happened sometimes. One of the boys would see him, sitting wherever he was sitting, just off to the side of their love, and they’d make that face. Just slightly disappointed. Just a little resigned. Just a little frown, as if Bobby needed reminding that they didn’t really want him there. He swallowed hard and kept staring at the floor.

“Bobby,” Reggie said, his voice clumsy, kind of slow. “Hey, Bobby.” He glanced up. Reggie’s face was drawn up. Looked all pinched. All upset.

Alex and Luke glanced at each other with something akin to muted panic. “Reg,” Alex muttered like a warning. Reggie huffed, sending him a glare as Luke’s hand curled around him, pressing into his chest like it was holding him back from whatever he was going to say.

“Bobby,” Luke said. His voice was slow too; slow and low, wrapping darkly through Bobby’s ears. “Can you go get us something to drink?”

Bobby swallowed. Nodded, climbing up to his feet. “Sure thing.” Alex sent him a grateful little smile. If his in return was worn, was tired, was lonely, then that was his business. It wasn’t their problem that sometimes he couldn’t breathe.

He went intentionally slow, slinking down the stairs one careful step at a time, hanging onto the railing like he’d tumble without it. The kitchen was swollen with shadows to catch him at every step; he almost felt lost, like he’d wandered into a maze without realising, unable to find familiarity in the darkened reservations of the house he’d spent half his teenage years in. He pulled open the fridge with careful hands and clumsy fingers, one slow inch at a time. It was fascinating to watch the light spill out ray by ray until it covered the whole of the linoleum in a brillant carpet. The sodas were on the top shelf. Alex kept everything he bought on the top shelf. His parents didn’t buy him groceries anymore. Made Bobby a little pissed to remember, but he shook it off. He knew their favorites. Grabbed them with barely a glance. Vanilla Coke for him and Alex, Sprite for Reggie, Dr Pepper for Luke ‘cause there was something wrong in either his head or his tastebuds. The closing of the refrigerator door sounded like an atom bomb in the silence. Bobby kind of wished an atom bomb would hit him.

He sat outside Alex’s bedroom for a few minutes when he got back upstairs. He felt kind of guilty walking back in once he knew they’d wanted him gone, and even going inch by inch through the maze of a house that lived in his mind, he didn’t feel like he’d taken near long enough. He leant his head back against the wall to stare up at the ceiling. Down the hall, he could hear faint music coming out of Alex’s brother’s room. Something kind of sad. He smiled faintly. At least they were in the same boat.

After another minute, he knocked. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Alex called back, and Bobby took that as cue enough to enter. They all stared at him as he did, and he froze in the doorway, almost wanting to step back out. Alex blinked hard, looking bemused. “Come on in, then,” he said. Bobby swallowed hard, but did as he was asked. “You don’t have to knock, you know,” he added. “You’re meant to be here.” That was a weird way of putting it, Bobby thought, but he didn’t comment. Just smiled distantly and dropped the cans on the bed.

Luke’s eyes struck into him. It kind of hurt when Luke looked at him like that, like he wasn’t looking at anything else. Probably because there wasn’t much to see. “Thanks.”

“Yeah,” was all Bobby could pull out of his sticky throat, taking up his Coke before heading back towards his wall. He sank down against it and cracked his drink open. It tasted like an explosion, one that burst out through his oesophagus and sent splinters of bone flying. He set it aside.

Luke’s eyes had followed him. Reggie, too, was peering over Alex’s shoulder again, fixing his stare against their lonely shadow on the wall. “Hey, Bobby,” he said, the same tone as before. Alex and Luke both made protesting noises, but Reggie huffed. “I just wanna ask,” he told them. “Just wanna know, okay?”

“Yeah, well, I don’t,” Luke muttered. He sank down onto his back on the bed. Alex reached one arm out of the knot made up of he and Reggie and laid his hand on Luke’s stomach, gripping the fabric of his shirt.

Bobby didn’t know why that made a lump raise in his throat, but he swallowed past it. “What do you wanna ask?”

Reggie opened his mouth once and closed it again, looking trepidatious. “Well,” he started, and then sent Alex a panicked look. “Fuck, uh-”

“It’s okay, Reg,” Bobby found himself saying. It felt like someone else was saying it, like his body had been stolen and he was left stranded a few inches behind, watching his own foreign mouth move. “You can ask anything.”

Reggie’s face drew up slightly, and then- “Why don’t you like us anymore?” he burst out, and burst Bobby into pieces with it.

“Huh?”

Luke sighed, sitting up. His eyes found Bobby’s through the dim light. “Reggie is just…” he pressed his lips together. “You’ve been kinda…” he glanced at the boys for help.

“Distant,” Alex finished for him.

“I haven’t.” Bobby couldn’t breathe.

Reggie’s lips were trembling. “That’s bullshit,” he replied. Alex and Luke both opened their mouths, but he shook his head, his sleep-mussed hair flying everywhere. “No, it is. That’s  _ bullshit.  _ I mean, even- even right now! Right now! You’re not- you’re over there! Why do you gotta be over there?” His voice ramped up in pitch, growing a little thinner. “You come to practice and you come to hang out and you come wherever we go, but you never really do, you just kinda follow where we’re going, and I hate it, I hate it! Why can’t you just come with us? Why do you gotta be over there?”

Bobby blinked.

He couldn’t really breathe.

“Reggie-”

“It’s not fair,” Reggie continued. “It’s not  _ fair.  _ What did we do wrong? Why aren’t we good enough for you? Why- why-” his breath was drawing quick, fast, not quite supporting his voice anymore. “Why? And how can we  _ fix  _ it, how can we be good enough? I just wanna- I just wanna fix it, Bobby, I swear, I just wanna make you like us again-”

“Reggie!”

Reggie cut himself off, staring wide-eyed across the room. Bobby didn’t know when he’d risen to his feet, but he stood there only half breathing, unable to muster anything but the beginnings of sobs hitching at his throat. “Reggie,” he repeated. It was twisted with something viciously painful, something that was tearing his stomach and throat to pieces. “Reg, Reggie, I-” his arms curled tight around himself. “I love you,” he whispered.

Reggie sank down a little further into Alex. “I love you too,” he whispered back. Their voices met in the middle, colliding, intertwining all hoarse and honest in the bleak nothing of a Sunday night. “I just wanna fix it, Bobby. I swear.”

Bobby shook his head. “You can’t-” he choked, had to swallow his own pride, swallow his own fear, squeeze his eyes shut and pretend he wasn’t himself to shove the words out. “You can’t fix it,” he said. “You can’t- you can’t fix me. You can’t make me better.” He was crying, maybe, but he couldn’t really tell when his whole face felt numb. “I love you,” he said again. “I love you, I love you, I need you, and I- I’m not good enough, and I’m sorry, and I know you don’t want me here-”

“Shut the fuck up.” It was Luke this time, his voice low and rough and wrapping around Bobby’s waist, cinching in until he was caught. Luke’s eyes caught him, saw him and then sawed right through, leaving him in pieces. “Shut the  _ fuck  _ up, Bobby, I swear to God-” and then he was raising his arms. “Come here.” The roughness had relaxed, but it was still coiled around Bobby like a rope, and he went, his knees hitting the edge of the mattress as he stayed ensnared by Luke’s stare. “Come  _ here,”  _ he repeated, more firmly this time. Bobby swallowed hard. Alex and Reggie unfolded themselves like an oyster, Reggie shifting up and back into Luke’s arms, his head lolling onto Luke’s shoulder but his eyes fixed unerringly on Bobby; Alex moved just a few inches, left just a little more space, and stared up at Bobby with big, open eyes, soft and overflowing and sweet. “Come here,” Luke said for a third time, nearly a whisper, and Bobby  _ crumbled. _

Alex met him easily, arms coiling around him like they’d always been there, pulling him in tight, and it was Alex’s arms around his waist, Alex’s knees around his legs, Alex’s nose buried in his neck. Alex, Alex, Alex, pulling him in, welcoming Bobby into himself like he was welcoming him home. “I love you,” Alex murmured, the sound pressing into his skin. “I missed you. I missed you.”

His eyes stung. “I missed you,” he echoed. “So much, Al, so much, so much-” he choked on his own throat again. “I love you,” he finished, barely a dent of sound.

Alex heard it, though. Alex heard it, and Alex tilted his nose up to press against the bottom of Bobby’s jaw, and Alex whispered, “I love you too,” and Bobby’s damnation faded away.

It was just a simple little moment in his simple little life; just four simple little words for a simple little boy on a Sunday night, overwhelming him with a love that wasn’t simple or little at all. A love that filled all the world. A love like Eve for life and like Adam for Eve- complete and utter and longing, filling him from head to toe, spilling out his eyes and fingers and toes. A love like the snake for truth, and a love like God for the garden. Protection and adoration and all of himself went coiling around his boys, drawing all three of them into him. His hand reached, knotting into Luke’s, resting on Reggie’s hip.

“I love you,” he said again, meeting Luke’s eyes. Luke’s eyes, striking into him, striking him into pieces and leaving him utterly bare. Achingly vulnerable and open and at  _ home.  _ Luke looked at him all warm and soft and sweet. Like the sun looked at the moon. Like brown sugar.

Luke squeezed his hand. “I love you.” Their gazes didn’t break. Luke hadn’t looked at him like this in a long, long time.

Reggie snuggled down further into Luke’s chest and reached out, entangling his fingers into Bobby’s hair. “I love you too,” he declared, and then, sounding very smug, “I love you  _ most.”  _ Luke rolled his eyes.

Alex scoffed. “As if,” he muttered, and then curled himself even further into Bobby, fading the two of them together irreparably. “I love him fuckin’... so much.” Bobby just made a little squeaking noise, unable to respond. His face was burning. Luke’s eyes were still heavy on his.

“Well,” he drawled, drawing Reggie further into his chest, “I think I’ve got you both beat.”

Bobby’s throat was dry. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Luke breathed, his hand tracing over Reggie’s hip for a moment before his fingers found his belt loop and hooked in. Reggie’s grip in Bobby’s hair tightened. “Yeah, I’d say so.” Alex nestled himself further into Bobby’s chest, his breath ghosting over the front of his throat, making Bobby shiver. Luke grinned lazily. “I love you,” he started, “Like sunsets on the beach.” Bobby’s breath caught. “When Reg drags us all down, and we’re laying on the sand together, and you’re sitting with me. You remember sitting with me?” Bobby squeaked again, not sure exactly how to respond. Alex laughed against his skin. “I’d sit behind you. Put my arms and legs around you, so you were pulled up against me. So you could be part of me.” His eyes were too soft to handle. “I love you like part of me,” he said quietly. “I wanna sit on the beach with you.”

Bobby swallowed hard. “I wanna be part of you,” he whispered. “You’re-” he drew in a long, shuddering breath, tasting weed and love and the scent of Alex’s shampoo under his tongue. “You’re all of me,” he breathed out. “All of you are all of me.”

Alex hummed. “I love you like music,” he murmured into the meeting of Bobby’s neck and shoulder. “Love you like the rhythm of the drums.” He kissed the spot gently. “Love you, love you, love you. Always.” Another kiss, a little higher up his neck. “Forever.” The bottom of his jaw. “Completely,” Alex breathed. “Love you like our songs.” Bobby let out a kind of broken whine, unable to respond, the burn of Alex’s lips still alight against his skin, the burn of Luke’s eyes still insistent against his.

Reggie huffed, looking put out. “Well-” he started, and then huffed again. “Well, I love you like- I love you like-” he screwed up his nose in discontent and then used his hand in Bobby’s hair to drag them closer together, together, their mouths colliding over Alex’s head. Bobby yelped into the kiss, but Reggie just swallowed the sound, and he was melting, melting, burning alive against his best friend, Alex’s body pressed between them as Reggie pulled him closer, closer, licking against his bottom lip. He tasted like Sprite and smoke and maybe a bit of sin. They parted after what felt like eternity, or maybe just a moment. “Yeah,” Reggie murmured. “Yeah, I love you like that.”

_ Like the fires of heaven, _ Bobby thought deliriously, and leant back in. He’d never kissed someone like Reggie, someone who gave and gave and gave and set his whole to blazing just with a graze. Someone whose lips were soft and smooth and firm and fit perfectly into his, melting the two of them into something better, something redeemed and whole. Alex made a displeased noise and muttered, “Fucking selfish  _ bastard-”  _ and then kissed Bobby’s jaw again, and again, and then the spot just under his ear, and scraped his teeth against the skin hard enough to make Bobby jolt, his teeth grazing against Reggie’s lip, and Reggie’s hand tightened in his hair, and Luke’s arm coiled over, his palm pressing into Bobby’s lower back, burning like a brand, and it was everything all at once, overwhelming him, sending him into the oblivion of them.

He broke the kiss and broke back into reality. The dim light of Alex’s bedroom flooded across them. Across their legs all tangled together and Alex’s hair against Reggie’s throat and Luke’s brown sugar eyes. “I love you,” he gasped, because he wasn’t sure he remembered how to say anything else. “I love you, I-” his eyes were stinging. “I thought- I thought-”

“Thought we didn’t want you,” Reggie said. “Thought,” and his hand dragged from Bobby’s hair to his cheek, “That we kept you around for the band, didn’t you? Thought you were extra to us?”

“I-”

Reggie’s gaze was a little soft, a little sad, and Bobby swallowed back his words in exchange for a slow nod.

“I know,” Reggie said, and kissed him again, a brush of lip on lip, love on love. “I feel that way too, sometimes.”

Alex sighed over Bobby’s skin. “Me too,” he confessed quietly.

Luke’s face contorted. “Wh-” he choked on his own word. “Boys, I-”

“Hey,” Bobby said, and smiled at him, and tried to be brown sugar for him, warm and sweet. “You love the band, Luke, it’s okay. We-” he licked his lips, letting himself breathe honesty through his fear. “We love you for it. We love you. We love your music, Luke, and we love who it makes you. We love that you’re happy. We love the way you’re so alive.” He swallowed. “It makes us so  _ alive.” _

“Lights us up,” Alex agreed. He shifted for the first time so that he could see Luke. “Turns us into- God, I don’t know. Turns us into ourselves, I think.” He was smiling. Bobby couldn’t help but hook a hand around his jaw, dragging him in to kiss it off him. It tasted like the sun. Alex laughed against his lips, the two of them twining like vines.

Reggie wriggled so that he could flip all the way over, his chest pressed in against Luke’s. “You’re music,” he said, and Luke made a low noise, his hand fisting in the fabric of Bobby’s shirt. Bobby smiled against Alex’s mouth. “Our music.” He hummed, his fingers tangling in Luke’s hair. “Couldn’t write a song without you.”

“My name is Luke,” Bobby whispered. “‘Cause everything I sing’s for you.”

Luke whined. “Okay, that’s not- that’s not fair,” he complained. “Thought this was about giving Bobby attention.”

“But you like our attention,” Reggie countered.

Alex scoffed. “He likes any kind of attention.”

“Yeah, but he likes ours most.”

“Well,” Alex leant his head against the back of Reggie’s shoulder, smiling at Bobby with all the love of the sun to the moon. “That’s true.”

Bobby stared at Alex, at his Alex, at his sunshine, for a little longer, and then shifted up. “Luke,” he said, and Luke jerked away from his wide-eyed stare at Reggie, turning it up to Bobby. “Hey. Luke. Lukey.” He reached out, trailing his fingers over his face. “You know I love you?”

Luke leant into his touch. “Only if you know I love you.”

“Good.” And he leant down to kiss him.

Bobby would be lying if he said he hadn’t thought a thousand times about kissing his boys. He has a thought, half-formed, that’s something like poetry- something about fire and wind and water, something about how Luke burns him until he’s the bared ashes of himself and Reggie sweeps him away into fantasy and the highs of infatuation and Alex washes over him like the steady thrum of waves washing over sand, but Luke’s lips on his burn his mind out, and all he can focus on is the way the sun blooms in his stomach.

Reggie made a pleased noise. “That’s hot,” he muttered.

“Oh my God, Reg,” Alex said, but he didn’t sound very convictive when his breath was half-gone. Reggie snickered.

Bobby pulled again and kept staring at Luke for a little longer. “Yeah,” he decided. “Yeah, you’re heaven.”

Luke grinned. “Thought you didn’t believe in God.”

“I believe in you.”

“Oh.” The word came out as a kind of gasp. Luke blinked, and then swallowed hard, and then tugged him quickly. One more kiss, solid and sinful and scorching Bobby into salvation. “Stop being so goddamn sweet.”

Reggie snickered again. “So,” he said. “I kissed Bobby, and Alex kissed Bobby, and Luke kissed Bobby-” he hooked a hand up into Luke’s hair and dragged him down, practically biting Luke’s mouth into his. Luke yelped, but dragged him closer, their legs tangling even tighter as Reggie took the kiss he wanted and then pulled back. “And I kissed Luke,” he continued. “So. When do I get to kiss Alex?”

Alex twisted himself over and tangled a leg in between Luke and Reggie’s. “Whenever you want,” he replied, a grin dancing over his face. Reggie’s eyes lit up.

Luke leant down and kissed Reggie again, just as fierce and sharp and on the loving edge of violent, and then breathed, “after me,” against his lips and leaned over him to kiss Alex. Alex accepted it easily- accepted it, and then rose into it like a tidal wave, crashing into Luke and taking over until Luke crumbled, falling apart for him. They stayed close for a few moments after it broke, the sound of four heaving sets of lungs swelling in the dim silence. “I love you,” Luke whispered.

Alex sighed shakily. “I know,” he whispered back. “God, Luke-” his eyes were shining with tears. “I know. I love you too.” Luke smiled. His eyes were wet too.

Reggie’s whole body shuddered, and then he whined, “Al,  _ please,”  _ and Alex laughed before leaning down into him. Alex and Reggie kissed like they breathed. Simple and easy and pressed into each other like they needed each other to survive. Desperate and dependent in the calmest of ways. They pulled each other oxygen into their lungs and then gave it back better and sweeter than before, swelling each other a bit more full of faith. Reggie leaned up and kissed Bobby right after, and then Luke after that, and settled down happily between them all. “Mm. This is right,” he said decisively. Met Bobby’s eyes. “Needed you,” he said.

Bobby hummed. “Maybe,” he said. They hadn’t really. They could have kissed all sweet and solid like that without him here.

Reggie’s eyes narrowed, though, and he said, “Needed you,” again, more insistent.

Luke nodded. “Couldn’t do it without you,” he agreed. “Couldn’t do it right. Keep us on rhythm, baby.”  _ Baby.  _ Bobby shuddered down to his bones as he flushed.

“Wouldn’t work without you,” Alex added. “Wouldn’t- wouldn’t be complete.”

Reggie scraped his teeth over Luke’s collarbone, earning a noise from all three of them. “Sunset Curve forever, boys,” he declared.

They were all looking at him. Looking at him. Talking all quiet, whispering among themselves as they were all piled together on the bed- this was the quiet conversation. He was part of the quiet conversation. He was here with his boys, breathing easy and free. “Sunset Curve forever,” he replied. His voice was trembling, but it was certain. He was certain.

Alex kissed him again. “Love you like music,” he repeated. It sounded like a song. Bobby loved him like every song he’d ever heard, but he could settle for saying it in a soft, sweet melody on a Sunday night.

They’d saved him.

He kissed Alex like the sand kissed the sea, steady and solid and certain, and whispered, “I love you like Reggie and Luke,” and Alex’s laugh in his lungs kept him breathing without fail.

**Author's Note:**

> aw . how disgustingly cheesy . stop letting me write for the love of god
> 
> anyway aha thank you for reading!!!!!!!! i love you all!!!!!! please drop a comment to let me know what you thought or shoot me some screams on tumblr @bobbywilsonsupremacy . really either works lmao


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